Amanda Ayers '14 shares insights on multimodality, collaborative writing, understanding audience and how she transitioned to writing as a professional

Amanda Ayers '14, Research Assistant at Keybridge Public Policy Economics

Hi all! I’m Amanda, Bucknell grad (’14) and former Peer Writing Consultant. I began working last June for a small public policy economics consulting firm located in Washington, DC.  I was excited to be approached to submit a piece to Bucknell Writes because the concept of the blog excited me, and I knew it would be a great opportunity to reflect on the work I’ve done out of school for the last 9(ish) months – more specifically, how my Bucknell experience, particularly as it relates to writing, has shaped the way I think and work here.  

To put it broadly, my current role is to provide preliminary research and analysis – both qualitative and quantitative – to my superiors on a wide range of emerging economic and public policy issues.  The more quantitative assignments I’m given range from processing and analyzing data on the efficacy of an anti-obesity program to narrowing a wide pool of academic studies and public datasets in order to order to assign a dollar value to the loss that cyber attacks impose to society.  Examples of the more qualitative-heavy work I’ve done include tackling the first draft of a literature review to synthesizing responses from hundreds of interviews we’ve conducted.

There are a couple salient features of the work that my firm delivers – which have become increasingly evident over the last few months.  In our capacity as consultants, the “product” we deliver is high-quality, polished material that distills complicated issues to our clients in a way that is both intuitive and, perhaps more important, actionable.  When I say intuitive, I mean our work needs to be methodical and easily understood by audiences that are both familiar and unfamiliar with the topic at hand. By “actionable”, I mean that our client needs to not only be able to make sense of what we give them, but also be able to easily use and act on the information - whether that be to take our material the Hill as part of a lobbying effort, present it in front of key business stakeholders, or circulate it internally within their organization.

Regardless of whether we’re using words or numbers -- or even the medium with which we choose to share the information (a slide deck, a word document, a spreadsheet) -- everything we deliver has a narrative and unfolds a cohesive argument.  For example, one of the most popular ways that we present information is through reading decks; rather than give a client a 5 page report, we deliver our information visually, using PowerPoint slides as our “canvas”.  We call them “reading decks” because rather than be presented, they are meant to be printed and circulated, communicating the same information that a document/PDF could, but in a much more visual and engaging manner.  Each slide contains what we call the “horizontal logic” – an ideally pithy, 2-sentence-max overview of what the graphs/visuals/text in the body of each slide are supporting, located at the top.  In theory, should we string all of the horizontal logics in the presentation together, they should form a cohesive, skeletal outline of the story we’re trying to tell.

When I was first learning to build out a deck like this, my boss suggested the following process: (1) write the horizontal logic of each slide first to produce a general roadmap of my argument; (2) support each logic in the body of the slide with the quantitative and qualitative data we’ve gathered, and (3) when I’m almost finished, interpret only the body of each slide and write down what it is communicating; if what I’ve written down relays the same idea as the logic I had previously written, I know my argument is sound and effectively supported.  As soon as he imparted this advice, I could not help but realize how reminiscent this was of my favorite consulting technique, which I used throughout my time at Bucknell on both my own work and with peers during sessions in the Writing Center: reverse outlining.  This is an exercise requiring a writer to read each paragraph of his/her paper, succinctly summarize the essential purpose of each paragraph in 1-2 sentences, and then string those sentences together.  A coherent string of sentences is typically a clear indication that the paper is well developed, supported, and structured.

I was interviewed as part of a video produced by the Writing Center my senior year – in it, I made note of the fact that by virtue of working there for 3 years and helping my peers, I had simultaneously grown tremendously as a writer myself. I believe that the anecdote I share above is testament to that growth.  With that being said, there are a number of other writing concepts and strategies we frequently discussed in the Writing Center that have permeated into my writing process now, proving themselves over again as invaluable in the “real world”.

1)    Writing is a process. Writing takes time and drafts are allowed to be messy; as a writer, my best ideas often come about when I’m not even actively working on an assignment, and always because I’ve allowed sufficient time for my argument to gel. I find this even more evident now than I did at Bucknell – rushed writing (for me anyway) results in half-baked ideas.

2)    Writing is collaborative. Working in a more collaborative environment has necessitated that I refine my writing process – particularly the early stages. The way that our office is structured, I take the first cut at an assignment, present it to my superior(s), s/he offers me feedback, I implement, and then we iterate until we get the piece where it needs to be.  I almost wish I had done more group writing assignments at Bucknell because when I started my job, I was so used to my own messy brainstorming (which often consisted of a bunch of ideas floating around in my head) -- only to find that no one else could understand it because I hadn’t been accustomed to ever sharing anything but near-final drafts.

3)    Understanding audience is more important than ever.  When I was working in the Writing Center, I often came across papers that exhibited the so-called “data dump” – whereby the writer would attempt to demonstrate everything s/he knew about a topic for a professor, whether or every point necessarily strengthened their argument or fit cohesively into the draft as a whole.  What I’ve come to realize in my job now is the importance of sharing information both selectively and intentionally.  Whereas a professor is often obligated to read every word you write in order to assign a grade, a client simply doesn’t have the time.  Writing in the real world requires brevity and a keen sense of audience - both the client’s position on the topic you’re writing about and how they plan to use the information you’re delivering.  My favorite type of feedback is receiving questions that probe why I choose to do things the way I do – why I choose to (not) include something, why I use a certain word, phrase, sentence, etc. over another – because it forces me to be more intentional.

4)    Reading aloud is still the best proofreading technique!

5)    The more I read, the better writer I become!

6)    Writing can be therapeutic.  Writing isn’t a chore that I set aside for work only – I journal frequently, for example, and find that the benefits are immense. My mind often races faster than my hand can keep up, which forces me to really reflect on one thing at a time and – at least for that moment – not bite off more than I can chew, so to speak.

7)    Medium doesn’t matter.  What’s become more apparent now is that medium doesn’t matter, as evidenced by the reading decks that I discussed above.  I loved that the Writing Center offered to help students on more than just papers – presentations, for example - and hope that it can continue to clear up the misconception on campus that writing needs to be confined to paper (or, for students just entering Bucknell, a 5 paragraph essay). In my job, we’re often telling a story with charts and numbers, and it’s no less of an argument than a traditional paper is – and certainly not two sided (another common misconception).

Molly O'Brien-Foelsch on achieving flow against the odds

Molly O'Brien-Foelsch, Director of University Marketing & Web Content

You know the feeling – the floaty one, in which the words want to land on the page faster than your fingers can move. You forget your surroundings. When you come back to earth, you find you have a decent first draft that you can somewhat effortlessly refine until you have a piece that impresses your readers and even yourself. It doesn’t happen often enough for me, or I’m guessing for any writer, that experience we call flow.

I used to be pretty good at finding flow. In college, I’d settle on the floor by my dorm-room bed with a half-gallon of grape Gatorade by my side and the Talking Heads’ greatest hits cassette playing on my boom box. Since my roommate was a lab-bound engineering major, I always had a few uninterrupted hours to sink into a rare, delicious writing trance.

It’s harder to achieve flow now that I work regular hours in a professional office, manage a small staff, and have tons of emails to address, along with IM’s, meetings and office drop-ins — few of which have anything to do with the writing projects that pepper my extensive to-do list.

And then there is the pressure of the public nature of my work. It’s easy to get writer’s block when I know my writing will be posted online or printed in a magazine or brochure with a circulation of 50,000. The readers themselves don’t make it easy, either. I’m writing for an audience of very smart, very critical faculty, administrators, alumni, parents, students and, gulp, teenagers. Sure, the stakes make my writing better, but they also tend to make me second-guess myself at nearly every turn. Yet when I look back over my professional portfolio, I see that I have, despite these obstacles, managed to achieve flow. The examples are many: the speech the president praised, the web story that garnered some great web traffic, the profile that a faculty member barely edited – these are the outcomes that benefit Bucknell and satisfy the writer in my heart.

So how do I get there? Here are a few strategies I use:

1) Define a goal.

Sometimes I receive a request for a writing project with no guidelines other than “This person needs to speak for 10 minutes” or “We need a blurb about Bucknell.” No pressure! If I find myself filling space with fluff or clichés, I take that as a signal that I have work to do before I write. I consider the needs of the speaker and the audience: What do they need to know about? What do they want to know about? Are there behaviors or actions I want to inspire? I consider, too, the context: Are there ties with historic or current events? Are there recurring themes that I can expand upon or present in a new light?

This kind of pre-writing work happens, for instance, with the faculty stories my team and I produce. We can’t produce a compelling story or effectively convey a main point by smooshing every topic from a 45-minute interview into 400 words. Instead, we think more abstractly about how some or all of those topics relate to each other. Did the interviewee’s body language and tempo reveal a particular passion? What aspects of their work relate to what prospective students and parents want to know during their college search? Are there any hot topics in the media that align with this person’s scholarship or teaching? Is there an emotional component to the work? A humorous one?

To keep my writing sharp, I have to do much more than write: I must stay abreast of issues in higher education and admissions; keep up with University news and faculty and student achievements; attend events and lectures and luncheons; get to know students; and learn about Bucknell’s history and strategic plans for the future. Flow doesn’t come from nothing — achieving it requires not only “mind work” but also the background work, legwork and mindfulness of continual research.

2) Mind map.

Once I have a clear objective or theme, I often sketch out a mind map to build an outline and argument. I’ve used software, but right now I like paper and pen. I put my central idea in the middle, write supporting ideas at the end of the spider’s arms, and fill in the details from there. Sometimes the entire structure of a piece materializes right there on the map. Then all that’s left to do is flesh out the piece.

3) Develop rituals.

I have a routine that works much like having a bedtime ritual did for me as a kid. It gets me in the right frame of mind to concentrate. Since I’ve become leery of ingesting too much purple food coloring, I’ve replaced grape Gatorade with Irish breakfast tea, and I now prefer silence to the Talking Heads. When I’ve got a big writing project to attack, I clean off my desk, organize, then shut off my email and IM, brew a big cup of tea and close my office door.

I have also experimented with writing at different times of the day. Alas, I get revved up at about 3:45 in the afternoon, much too close to quitting time. Weirdly, my best editing and rewriting time is before 7 a.m. I hate mornings, but when there’s a messy draft in need of help, that’s when I have to do it.

4) Do yoga.

Yoga really helps me concentrate, even if a day or two has elapsed since my last session. Writing flow and a good savasana feel nearly identical to me, and even a few ujjayi breaths and a couple of downward-facing dogs help get the juices flowing.

5) Relocate.

Sometimes a change in scenery or atmosphere is the key to the click. I sit in the comfy chair in the corner of my office, go to 7th St. Café or Cherry Alley, or take a walk around campus and chat with a few people to see if that frees up the words. A hot shower steams the words loose from my brain when I’m really struggling with a project.

6) When all else fails, deconstruct and reconstruct.

I save this approach for really high-stakes or complex projects that aren’t cooperating because a) it’s a lot of work and b) my coworkers tend to think I’ve lost it if they see me doing this: I print the thing out and then slice it to bits – with a real scissors. I spread the pieces out on my office floor and rearrange them, categorize them with different colors of highlighters and Sharpies (A, B, C, etc.) and toss out some of the slips. I refer to the remaining slips to revise the digital draft, add new text to fill in the gaps the process has revealed, and line edit from there. This opposite-of-flow approach is a dramatic way to kill my darlings and develop a draft that doesn’t make me cringe, but when all else fails, it works.

  

Molly O'Brien-Foelsch M'98 is Director of University Marketing & Web Content within Bucknell's Division of Communications. She has worked at Bucknell for more than 11 years and has experience in writing admissions recruitment materials across media, presidential remarks, video storyboards, faculty stories, grant proposals, and other written pieces that communicate the value of a Bucknell education across audiences. She holds a master's degree in English from Bucknell and her bachelor's degree in English from Cedar Crest College. She lives in Milton, Pa., with her husband, Brian, their rescued German shepherd mix, Greta, and two cats. See her portfolio here (you may have to copy and paste, sorry!):   https://www.linkedin.com/in/mollyobrienfoelsch/.